As CD's die out, more and more focus is being put on internet downloading of music, with several online retailers popping up. Cue the latest entry into a rapidly overcrowded market: mflow.
Like any MP3 store, you can browse the site and find most major acts (there's still a couple of labels that are unavailable). Both songs and albums are available in 320kps quality, which is very good. In the push to get people to notice the site, it has making available a surprisingly large amount of promotional offers. So far, it has offered a range of offers, from free credit to codes that lower all song prices to just 20p, as well as offering certain albums for free. The site is 100% legal, and pays all artists, as required.
While it is undoubtedly a great offer to avail of, one has to ask, how do they intend to make a successful business out of it?
The answer to this is a fairly novel idea. The website allows users to "flow" songs, either on their mflow profile, or via Facebook, Twitter or Google Buzz. What this does is essentially promote the song to anyone following that user, presenting them with a link to purchase the song. But why would anyone do that?
As an incentive, for each purchase that is made via that flow, the user receives some of the payment, in the form of additional credit, worth 20% of the purchase.
It remains to be seen if such a tactic will pay dividends in the long term, or whether it is just a short-term novelty. However, with iTunes currently dominating the digital downloads market, it makes sense that new challengers will have to provide something different.
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